ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a
Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died,
and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's brothers, both men of
yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at
Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a
land where there is one noble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and
descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are
mired with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest
nobility. Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth
that went along with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.
He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out into
the plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the
shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed
him. He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and
lovers of poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They
were never to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give
what he had to him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet
whatever they said was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be
ministers of peace, and if any man did them violence they were never to
resist him. Nevertheless they were not to lack for courage, but to laugh
to scorn the enemies that tormented them, and smile in their pains and
shed no tear. And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to
esteem it more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible,
but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released
from the bondage of the flesh. Not dissenters from the Koran, but
stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews, yet followers of
Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.
And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the
cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets,
from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service
of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds
and trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty,
and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought
nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs
save the stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which
they drove before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their
fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for
their food and the hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and
desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering
themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of
battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded,
passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about
Mequinez. And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been
so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as
Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan: “God will feed
us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He
clothes the fields.”
Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his
people too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties
were enough already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a
palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom
had the dusty and tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the
fast of Ramadhan, and Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the
double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his
famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the
night. In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some
obstacles, but his time was long.
And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan,
so he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed
through, and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes
very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was
passing through his own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people
think but that he had come to make a new assessment of their lands and
holdings, their cattle and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and
more fully. So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of
their houses as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse,
and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot
in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord), a title never
before given to a Jew, and offered him presents out of their meagre
substance.
“A gift for my lord,” they would say, “of the little that God has given
us, praise His merciful name for ever!”
Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.
Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.
“Keep them,” he would answer; “keep them until I come again,” intending
to tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.
And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic
of El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos
hastened before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks
and palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his
errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in
the early morning.
“Peace be with you!” said the Kaid. “So my lord is going again to the
Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!”
Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of
crooked lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near
the market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the
presents of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars
who looked on with feverish eyes.
Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of
Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the
foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand
Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood
waiting to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention
of his journey.
“Welcome! welcome!” said the Shereef; “all you see is yours until Allah
shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our
lord the Sultan at Fez--may God prolong his life and bless him!”
“God make you happy!” said Israel, but he offered no answer to the
question that was implied.
“It is twenty and odd years, my lord,” the Shereef continued, “since my
father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that
time has wrought since then, under Allah's will; but none in the past
have been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in
the future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (God keep
our lord Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him.”
“God will show,” said Israel.
No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef
alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel's
horse instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past
the old Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque
of the Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live
like cattle. A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy
rags, a group of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled
renegades leaning against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from
their dishevelled heads and bowed.
That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the
ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company of Muslimeen--guests
in the house of the descendants of the Prophet--were, by special
Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at
their pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and
his men started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with
the Shereef's black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of
honour, through the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock
that is warning to strike) a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with
fierce and dirty faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid
clouds of hot dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should
proclaim the end of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains
stood ready to fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on
the ground with dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain
rolled in their fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef,
and flint and tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the
minaret stood looking abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun
was lazily sinking under the plain.
Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were
the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of
their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought
the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage,
and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of
his mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this
lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!
Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like
ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over
the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town,
through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious
barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they
came in the grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the
Father of Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept
it were snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.
“Selam! M'barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!” shouted the Shereef's
black guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in
Israel's honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him
housed within.
From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came
yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. “Burn your father!
Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!”
“Selam!” shouted one of the black guard. “You dog of dogs! Your father
was bewitched by a hyena! I'll teach you to curse your betters. Quick!
get up,--or I'll shave your beard. Open! or I'll ride the donkey on your
head! There!--and there!--and there again!” and at every word the butt
of his long gun rang on the old oaken gate.
“Hamed el Wazzani!” muttered several voices within.
“Yes,” shouted the Shereef's man. “And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his
way to the Sultan, God grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi
Israel el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and
snoring in your dirt.”
There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys,
and then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two
of the four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse,
asking forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime,
the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had
ridden far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his class and
country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham
and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.
“I heard you were coming,” he panted--“sent for by the Sultan--Allah
preserve him!--but had I known you were to be here so soon--I--that
is--”
“Peace be with you!” interrupted Israel.
“God grant you peace. The Sultan--praise the merciful Allah!” the Kaid
continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup--“he reached Fez from
Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him.”
“God will show,” said Israel, and he pushed forward.
“Ah, true--yes--certainly--my lord is tired,” puffed the Kaid, bowing
again most profoundly. “Well, your lodging is ready--the best in
Mequinez--and your mona is cooking--all the dainties of Barbary--and
when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand Vizier--”
Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until
they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until
sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same--the Sultan, the
Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!
Israel could bear no more. “Basha,” he said “it is a mistake; the Sultan
has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him.”
“Not going to him?” the Kaid echoed vacantly.
“No, but to another,” said Israel; “and you of all men can best tell me
where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen--yet a poor
man--the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez.”
Then there was a long silence.
Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after
sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and
no man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had
gone off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind
him his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen,
who, like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in
dudgeon. The Kaid had turned them out of the town.
Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within
their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the
tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there
passed them in the fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of
the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and
shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had to pass
over. They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid
of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace without
delay, that he might give good account of his stewardship, or else
deliver up his substance and be cast into prison for the defalcations
with which rumour had charged him.
Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people,
who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at
Fez; and great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they
remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last
in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly
touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of
its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his
door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and
built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken
from him and the other failed him, where then was the hope of that man's
salvation, whether in this world or the next? The dungeon, the chain,
the lash, the wooden jellab--what else was left to him? Only the wail
of the poor whom he has made poorer, the curse of the orphan whom he
has made fatherless, and the execration of the down-trodden whom he has
oppressed. These followed him into his prison, and mingled their cries
with the clank of his irons, for they were voices which had never yet
deserted the man that made them, but clamoured loud at the last when his
end had come, above the death-rattle in his throat. One dim hour waited
for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace--one lonely
hour wherein none could bear him company--and what was wealth and
treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on earth? Was it
glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth--what could it be but a
will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night! Oh! riches of
gold and silver--what had they ever been but marsh-fire gathered in the
dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the service of the
prince of it!
Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure--so far away. Though
all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by
God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from
his child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling!
His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose
anything, everything, all that the world and all that the devil had
given him; but let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what
was gold without gladness, and what was plenty without peace?
Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the
musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of
unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped
like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were
a vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included
multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil
moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago
they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from
Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from
Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous
Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but
their substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them.
Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
privations patiently--the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains
of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the
Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of both
in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or
sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild
bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.
So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What
of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them
as He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was
seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour,
He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to
plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it.
“The hunger is on us!” “Our children are perishing!” “Find us food!”
“Food!” “Food!”
With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
their leader when he answered them.
First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
quivering nostrils. “Do you think I am Moses,” he cried, “that I should
smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full?
If you are naked, am I clothed?”
But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
was saying in a very moving voice, “My good people, who have followed
me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than
you can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that
death itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that
Allah sees a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that,
unknown to us all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass!
Patience, I beg of you; patience, my poor people--patience and trust!”
At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered
the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan
had burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes
worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings and
earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang on the breast
as safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much gold filagree of the
kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box
and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further
thought to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of
them, he said, “Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, 'A
present to the man of God and to his people in their trouble.'”
And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him,
it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had
opened and rained manna on their heads.
“It is an answer to your prayer,” he cried; “an angel from heaven has
sent it.”
Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened
to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched
throats--
“Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!”
And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of
men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together,
and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great
broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them succour, that they
might not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every
man looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, “I could
have borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I
was a fool.”